


Blank Hour

by Ori_Cat



Category: Relic Master Series - Catherine Fisher
Genre: Christianity, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 03:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11661180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: Anara rotates slower than Earth, leaving a space of time that appears on no clocks.





	Blank Hour

“What are you doing?” 

Surprised, Tamar looked up over the top of his computer. Flain folded his arms annoyedly at him. 

“I’m writing my report,” Tamar answered. 

Flain sighed. “I meant, Tamar, why are you doing it in the middle of the night - what time is it anyway - and waking us all up with your goddam clicking?” 

“I was awake. And no time. And language.” The corner of his computer screen showed a set of three dashes where the time should be. Because Anara had a day equivalent to 25 Earth hours and 16 Earth minutes, in order to make the clocks align it had been determined that a “blank hour” (and 16 minutes) was to be added in the middle of each Anaran night, inserted just before 3:00 where daylight savings time (obsolete, but people had held on to it because they were used to it) usually was added. It made it much easier to program all the electronics, rather than trying to produce a day of whole hours. Even that didn’t take into account the gravity difference and changes when messages were sent by ansible. 

But it meant that there was, approximately, an hour and sixteen minutes that did not belong to Earth but to Anara only. An hour and sixteen minutes that only six people got to experience. “Look, I’ll go outside, okay?” 

It was much colder outside the tent. Tamar sat down beside the flap, accidentally crushing some of the small black flowers - as far as they could tell, truly black - into sweetness. Flain, now fully awake, sat down on his left. “Can I ask you a question?” 

“Sure.” 

“What do you really think about all this? This mission. Everything we’re doing.” He gestured vaguely at the forest. 

It was a fair question. 

There had been plenty of controversy about the terraforming - Tamar supposed there still was, but it was over a hundred light years away now and so felt very remote. There had been claims that humans had no cosmic right to be taking over any other planets. There had been claims the human race would die out if it didn’t find somewhere to move. There had been claims that it was wrong to let the six of them go and die on another planet. There had been refreshingly practical complaints that it was too much money. There had been counterarguments that nothing was more important than the search for knowledge. And there had been claims that they were Playing God and allowing humans to leave Earth was Subverting God’s Plan and they would be Punished For It. 

“I think,” he began, “I think we have to be careful. I think that we can’t forget we are supposed to be respectful and do as little harm as possible. But I do think we have good intentions in this. And as for God… I don’t know exactly if we’re doing His will, but if he didn’t want us to be here,” he shrugged, “we probably wouldn’t be.”

**Author's Note:**

> I totally stole the idea from Kim Stanley Robinson's Martian Time Slip.


End file.
